Author Notes

Booklist Review

Stotsky grounds her provocative critique of reading instruction in the U.S. in her research on the quality of vocabulary and content of 10 popular fourth-and sixth-grade basal readers. Teachers and nonteachers alike will be enlightened by her on the connections between progressive education, whole language, and multicultural instruction; the role of textbook adoption groups and legislation; schools of education; the evolution of children's literature and the concept of childhood; and the pressures of the textbook market. Despite some loaded language, her perspective is nonsectarian. She names names and criticizes some key figures for their anti-intellectualism, lack of research rigor, loose conceptualization of stages and standards on which much policy is based, and paucity of sound evidence that the initial reason for multicultural textbooks--that they increase self-esteem or group membership and pride--contributes to higher academic achievement. She persuasively argues the inability to construct knowledge without exposure to content, and she demonstrates the near impossibility of good discussion of literature based solely on emotional response to it. Likely to stir hot debate. --Jennie Ver Steeg

Publisher's Weekly Review

If Johnny can't read, blame the books. According to Stotsky, a research associate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, increasingly dumbed-down elementary school textbooks have been lowering the standards of literacy in the name of multiculturalism. Culling excerpts from the nation's bestselling fourth- and sixth-grade basal readers, she argues that students in the 1990s are being fed a diet of simplistic texts studded with nonstandard dialects selected not for their intellectual rigor or their ability to "delight the imagination" but for their appeal to children's putative "feelings" about being "victimized" by white Western males. As a result, she claims, students, especially minorities, are not being prepared for the analytic thinking required in secondary school. Perhaps worse, Stotsky argues, they are being inculcated with potentially dangerous cultural misinformation. The excerpts Stotsky quotes are indeed "preachy, boring" texts with a "relative paucity of literate words." Her criticism of how the accompanying teacher guides pander to students' self-esteem by soliciting uninformed feelings about social issues is bold and persuasive as well. But while her arguments about pedagogy are convincing, her indictment of the current practice of "using literature for nonliterary purposes" is muddied by her own repeated call for textbooks that "encourage positive civic sensibilities"; this argument opens a can of worms about what exactly "positive civic sensibilities" are. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Choice Review

Stotsky (Harvard Graduate School of Education and Director of the Harvard Summer Institute on Writing, Reading, and Civic Education) presents a conservative analysis of the state of literacy education in American schools at the end of the millennium. Drawing on a content-analytic study of elementary school beginning language instruction readers, the author argues that the growing influence of multiculturalism, bilingualism, and feminism has led to the production of instructional materials promoting anticivic, anti-American, and anti-intellectual ends. She asserts that multiculturalists, responding to empirically unjustified assumptions about self-esteem and motivation, have led publishers to produce curriculum materials that emphasize the political and cultural oppression of minorities by whites, contain serious distortions and omissions of relevant historical information, elevate group identity above civic identity, promote "mindless" social activism, and foster interethnic and gender animosities. The strength of the book lies in the intensity and precision with which the author argues against the use of the reading curriculum as a vehicle for promoting primarily social and emotional (versus literary and academic) ends. This is a detailed polemic intended to inspire public concern and guide educational reform. It will be of interest to teachers, teacher educators, parents, and specialists in multicultural education, language arts, bilingual education, social foundations, and educational policy studies. J. A. Gamradt University of New Mexico